An audio message from Muammar Qaddafi has appeared on Syrian television, although his physical whereabouts are still unknown. The defiant speech included the lines, "We will fight in every valley, in every street, in every oasis, and every town. We won't surrender again; we are not women; we will keep fighting."

In fact, women have been forcibly recruited into the loyalist army and before that, Qaddafi's corps of bodyguards, and the government's spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, had declared, "We are going to make sure that every mother, the symbol of love and creation, is a bomb, a killing machine." Make up your mind, insane and ruthless dictator.